[1] He also worked as a farm hand, an air traffic controller and, most notably, as an RAAF navigator in Bomber Command during the Second World War.
Charlwood left Frankston High School in his Leaving Certificate year, to take a job with a local estate agency and produce market.
During this time he completed a short-story course by correspondence with the London School of Journalism and had a number of stories published, sometimes under the pseudonym E. K.
He remained there through the thirties, but in 1940, as war unfolded in Europe and France, and the Low Countries fell, he signed up for the RAAF, and was placed on the reserve.
Their trip to Canada on the liner SS Monterey was the first across the Pacific by Australian service personnel on a ship registered in neutral America.
In May 1943, Charlwood and his course travelled to England, on the Polish liner MS Batory anchoring on the River Clyde on the evening of 12 May.
[4] He was subsequently mustered for repatriation to Australia via the US where he was to train for duties in the Pacific theatre on Considated Liberator 4 engined bombers.
On route to Australia, Charlwood detoured to Edmonton, Canada, where he married Nell East, who he had first met when training as a Navigator in 1941.
[5] Following his return to Australia he was invalided out of the RAAF in July 1945, and commenced work with the Department of Civil Aviation, initially as an Air Traffic Controller, and later in training and recruitment.
No Moon Tonight (1956) and Journeys into Night (1991) have been described as among the finest autobiographical works on Bomber Command in World War II.